Union College plans to build new residence hall

Union College in Schenectady is planning to build a new, $9 million, 38,000-square-foot apartment-style residence hall on land it owns on the corner of Roger Hull Place and Park Place.

The dorm will house 80 students and include two-, three-, and four-bedroom apartments with common living space and kitchens. It will be located nearby student theme houses that line Seward Place on the western part of the Union College campus.

Union says that the new dorm will help it achieve its goal of getting 100 percent of its students to live on-campus. Although the school requires all students to live on-campus, it doesn’t have enough dorm rooms to fit all of them. A small number of upperclass students are granted waivers from the requirement through a lottery held each winter.

“It has always been the college’s intent to be fully residential,” said Loren Rucinski, director of facilities services. “This project moves the college closer to that goal.”

The project will be funded by college-issued bonds.

Sano-Rubin Construction Co. Inc. of Albany is the general contractor, and the architect is Envision Architects P.C., also of Albany.

Construction will begin this fall, but the building won’t be ready until the 2015-16 academic year.

The college said in a press release that the building will blend into surrounding neighborhood and will “maintain the architectural integrity of the surrounding properties.”

The dorm will also have energy efficient heating and cooling systems as well as sustainable features such as a rain garden.

Students will also be able to monitor the building’s energy efficiency functions through an interactive kiosk on the ground floor.

Schenectady’s planning board and zoning board of appeals must approved the project.